Anti-government protesters camp near a stage as they occupy a main intersection in central Bangkok February 5, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha

4 Killed, Including a Police Officer, as Thai Police Move In on Protests

International New York Times | 18 Feb. 2014

BANGKOK — Four people, including a police officer, were killed and at least 64 were injured on Tuesday as antigovernment demonstrators resisted attempts by thousands of riot police officers to dislodge them from the streets surrounding the prime minister’s office.

Protesters, who for the past three months have sought to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and have hampered elections, remained defiant as thousands of officers cleared away barricades that protesters had erected on a bridge near key government offices.

“We insist that we will remain in the seized areas because we don’t want the cabinet and prime minister to return and use their barbaric powers,” said Ekanat Prompan, a former member of Parliament who is a spokesman for the protest movement.

Mr. Ekanat, who spoke on Thai television, said protesters were “peaceful and unarmed” and accused the government of using weapons against them.

But a photographer, Jack Kurtz, was among several witnesses who said he saw a man among the protesters carrying an assault weapon. Mr. Kurtz reported on Twitter that protesters had pushed out photographers when gunfire started and instructed them to stop taking photographs.

At least 20 of the injured were police officers. One police officer who was shot in the head and previously listed as dead by state media was later reported to be in a critical condition. The Thai news media reported that one of the civilians killed was a protester. The identities of the other victims was not immediately known.

The government said that a grenade had been used against the police and that tear gas had been fired by the protesters — not by the police. Photos in the Thai news media showed a badly wounded police officer whose legs appeared to have been injured by an explosion. More than 140 protesters were arrested but, in a sign of the weakened powers of the Thai authorities, one protest leader who had been arrested Tuesday and detained in a police vehicle was later freed, reportedly by protesters.

Led by a former deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, the movement opposing Ms. Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister, has been part protest, part insurrection. The protesters have powerful allies in the Thai bureaucracy and elites who resent the dominance of the Shinawatra family in politics. Protesters denounce the “dictatorship of the majority.”

Both the United States and the European Union have lauded the government for its restraint in handling the protests, which have shut down a number of government offices and blocked major intersections in Bangkok.

The number of protesters has waned in recent weeks, but a core of several thousand remain, including many from southern Thailand, the stronghold of the opposition.

Protesters in southern Thailand were instrumental in blocking the registration of two dozen candidates for the Feb. 2 election, an obstruction that has prevented Parliament from reaching a minimum number of elected representatives. The government is pressing the country’s Election Commission to hold elections in the obstructed districts as well as fresh voting in areas where protesters blocked people from casting votes.

Ms. Yingluck’s opponents are hoping that she is removed from politics as part of an investigation into a botched rice subsidy policy that may cost the government billions of dollars. Thailand’s countercorruption commission on Tuesday announced that Ms. Yingluck must appear later this month to answer allegations that she “refused to perform her duty” by not suspending the policy. If Ms. Yingluck is charged with a crime, she could be impeached. But it is unclear what this means in practical terms since her government resigned in December when she called for elections.